Picture a six-year-old boy in Taiwan watching a Buddhist monk meditate.
His missionary father had taught him that anyone who didn’t believe in Jesus was condemned to hell. But watching that monk sit in perfect repose before the Buddha, young Jim Garrison realized something that would shape the next 50 years of his life.
The monk wasn’t going to hell. He was going somewhere elevated and enlightened.
“That cracked the cosmic egg of my life and enabled me to think out of the box, to have ideas without boundaries.”
That single childhood moment taught Jim what he’s never forgotten – what you’re being taught by society doesn’t mean it’s true. And that realization set him on a path that would lead to co-founding the State of the World Forum with Mikhail Gorbachev, creating Ubiquity University, and asking the questions most leaders are too afraid to contemplate.
During my conversation with Jim on The Wisdom Of… Show, he revealed why we’re living through the most consequential period in human history – and why that should make us excited, not terrified.
Wisdom Begins as an Act of Rebellion
Most people think wisdom comes from accumulating knowledge. Jim learned the opposite.
“Wisdom begins as an act of rebellion.”
When he turned 18, the US government wanted to draft him for Vietnam. Because he’d already broken out of the box as a child, he refused. Not because he wanted to make a political statement, but because questioning authority had become his nature.
And here’s what fascinates me about Jim’s approach – he wasn’t trying to convince anyone of anything.
“I learned a very long time ago, it doesn’t do very much good to try to convince people of anything. I have enough work to do on myself.”
Instead of arguing ideology, he lived his truth. And that authenticity sparked curiosity in others. People started asking why he refused the draft, and suddenly, he was having existential conversations instead of ideological arguments.
The difference? “Most disagreements are happening at the level of theoretical, ideological discourse. But when you’re sharing your life, your pathos, what you stand for, it engenders a qualitatively different dialogue.”
This principle – living authentically rather than convincing others – has guided every major move in Jim’s career. From his doctoral dissertation on nuclear culture to founding global institutions, he’s focused on doing the work on himself first.
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Thinking in Civilization Timeframes
While most leaders think quarterly, Jim thinks in millennia.
His PhD dissertation at Cambridge explored a staggering question: Why is it that after billions of years of evolutionary life on Earth, our species has brought the entire life process to the brink of extinction through thermonuclear war and climate change?
Using Carl Jung’s analysis, Jim discovered something profound about our current moment. Jung wrote an essay in 1945 called “After the Catastrophe,” contemplating what happened with World War II and the Holocaust. His conclusion?
“That was only a curtain raiser for what was to come.”
Jim identifies four levels of what he believes is happening right now:
The end and collapse of Judeo-Christianity as a dominant religious ethos
The death of Western civilization after 500 years of colonialism’s moral rot
The collapse of the American Empire and American democracy
The rise of authoritarianism worldwide
Here’s where Jim’s perspective shifts everything.
“The deeper the crisis, the greater the opportunities. We are in the most exciting period in all of human history.”
See how this civilizational thinking translates into actionable frameworks in the full episode
The Question That Changes Everything
When Jim decided to recreate the State of the World Forum, he faced a challenge. The original forum worked because Gorbachev could convene the world. His gravitas brought Nobel Laureates, Heads of State, and spiritual leaders together.
But there’s no Gorbachev today. No single person with that level of superordinate gravitas.
So Jim realized something that connects directly back to Socrates: it wasn’t a person who could convene the world. It was a question.
And not just any question – the biggest question humanity has ever faced:
How should humanity at this time elevate its consciousness to deal creatively with four fundamental truths?
Ecological collapse and escalating climactic turbulence everywhere
Instability and turbulence at every level of human affairs
Exponential artificial intelligence, unleashed unregulated
Non-human intelligences – UFOs and extraterrestrial contact confirmed by governments
These four data points reveal four intelligences impinging on us simultaneously: human intelligence, nature intelligence, artificial intelligence, and cosmic intelligence.
Most people can’t even contemplate that sentence. Jim’s building institutions around it.
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The Species Ego Problem
Here’s what hit me during our conversation: we’re probably the only species on the planet with species ego.
We believe we are THE intelligence. It’s almost impossible for us to contemplate that there’s intelligence broader and deeper than our own, even though we’re a nano-spec in the concept of space.
Jim agreed immediately: “The only group in the world that doesn’t understand this is the Western mind. Indigenous people worldwide and most people around the world take for granted that cosmic intelligence exists. Only the Western mind has lost track of the plot.”
This delusion that we’re the apex species and the only intelligence has brought us to the brink of extinction.
The opportunity? Aligning ourselves with nature again, connecting with cosmic intelligence, and integrating artificial intelligence into a larger matrix of benign consciousness.
“If we can transition from human superiority and dominance over nature to what I would call sacred reciprocity with nature, I think we’re going to survive. If we don’t make that transition, we’re going to either destroy ourselves or seriously damage ourselves.”
Watch how I build a complete visual model of this multi-intelligence framework with Jim
Questions Make People Equal, Answers Subordinate Them
Towards the end of our conversation, Jim said something that crystallized his entire philosophy:
“If you’re presenting an answer, you present dogma or an ideology. If you’re living in the questions, by the nature of things, you make people equal because you’re asking a question in a spirit of unknowingness. Questions equalize people. Answers subordinate people.”
This is why Socrates said the only thing he knew was that he knew nothing. Living in the question makes everyone’s perspective equally valuable.
And that’s exactly what the State of the World Forum is doing – establishing a six-year process between 2025 and 2030 to ponder the biggest question humanity has ever faced. They’re even offering a $100,000 award to help answer it.
You don’t need to have answers. You just need to contemplate the question.
Living Large Enough to Meet the Moment
When I asked Jim what period in history he’d want to time-travel to, his answer revealed everything about how he sees our current moment.
He’d want to hang out with the Buddha, Jesus, Alexander the Great, or Pythagoras. People at great moments that transformed history itself.
Then he said something that stopped me:
“I think we’re in one of those great moments right now. If you were there in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, you wouldn’t want to be wasting your time selling wine or selling olives. You want to be on the mount listening to the man. But how do you know that the man is there when everything seems normal?”
His answer? You’ve got to intuit the largeness, the momentousness of this moment.
“Here now, 2025 to 2030 is one of the most consequential moments in all of human history, so we need to live large.”
Not live large with ego – live large with soul. Your soul has to be as big as the moment.
“The depth of one’s questions is proportionate to the enlargement of the soul. Your soul has to be as big as the moment. That requires deep work on yourself, a deep opening of the psyche to contain the
See how this philosophy translates into practical frameworks
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Meeting the Moment Without Ego
People can be obsessed with finding their purpose and having an impact on thousands. Jim’s approach is simpler and more profound.
Just meet the moment.
If you’re a leader in business, education, politics, or any field where you have significant responsibility, meet the moment without ego.
Regardless of your leadership level, you still have the moment to meet. Elevate your level of consciousness. Elevate your level of inquiry.
The conflict is always in the answer, never in the question. Rise above conflict to get to deeper consideration. Ask better questions.
Maybe that’s too simple to be acceptable. But what if the answer to becoming a better leader really was just that – ask better questions, then ask another better question, then another?
Form a habit of questioning five times before you arrive at a solution. Because questioning is the lost art form.
And in this moment between 2025 and 2030, when four intelligences are impinging on us simultaneously, when civilizations are collapsing and rising, the quality of our questions will determine humanity’s fate.
Then discover the systematic methodology for turning wisdom into frameworks in my Masterclass
The State of the World Forum is asking the biggest question humanity has ever faced. You don’t need to agree with every premise. You just need to be willing to contemplate it.
Because wisdom doesn’t reside in the answers. It lives only in the questions.
